Eco­nom­ic in­equal­ity has ris­en to the top of our na­tion­al dia­logue in re­cent years, gar­ner­ing a lot of at­ten­tion in the me­dia, as well as from loc­al and na­tion­al lead­ers. This heightened in­terest in in­equal­ity has de­veloped be­cause eco­nom­ic in­sec­ur­ity is touch­ing more and more people — not just the poor or his­tor­ic­ally dis­ad­vant­aged — in a very real way. Though most of the at­ten­tion has been fo­cused on grow­ing gaps in in­come and wealth, as well as how dif­fi­cult it has be­come to climb the eco­nom­ic lad­der, much less has been said about a more ba­sic real­ity fa­cing people every day: After ac­count­ing for in­fla­tion, most Amer­ic­ans’ hourly wages have grown very little in the last three and a half dec­ades.

What’s hap­pen­ing with wages is es­sen­tially con­nec­ted to every form of grow­ing eco­nom­ic in­equal­ity. The main source of in­come for the ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­an house­holds comes from the money earned at jobs. This is the money Amer­ic­ans use to meet ba­sic liv­ing ex­penses and to save for down pay­ment on a home, col­lege tu­ition, or re­tire­ment.

This is es­pe­cially true for Afric­an-Amer­ic­an and Latino work­ers who gen­er­ally have few­er as­sets and rely al­most ex­clus­ively on their paychecks to sup­port them­selves and their fam­il­ies. There­fore, any­one con­cerned about elim­in­at­ing eco­nom­ic in­equal­ity — everything from dis­par­it­ies in in­come and wealth to gulfs in op­por­tun­ity and mo­bil­ity — must also be con­cerned about wage growth and elim­in­at­ing ra­cial wage gaps. Gran­ted, broad-based wage growth is not a com­plete pan­acea for all ra­cial dis­par­it­ies in eco­nom­ic out­comes. Wealth, the value of cash and as­sets that a house­hold owns after ac­count­ing for debt, is lower for the vast ma­jor­ity of black and Latino work­ers even when com­pared with white house­holds with sim­il­ar in­comes. But broad-based wage growth would help to nar­row per­sist­ent wealth, op­por­tun­ity, and mo­bil­ity gaps.

A re­port re­leased by the Eco­nom­ic Policy In­sti­tute this month doc­u­ments the fact that since 1979, wages have grown slower than pro­ductiv­ity for every­one ex­cept the top 5 per­cent of work­ers. That means a very large ma­jor­ity of work­ers have reaped few­er of the eco­nom­ic re­wards they helped to pro­duce over the last 34 years. Most of it has gone to those at the very top of the wage scale. As there has been an ever-shrink­ing share of the pie for the ma­jor­ity of work­ers to di­vide, Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans and Lati­nos have got­ten only crumbs and ra­cial wage gaps have re­mained stub­bornly hard to close.

Ra­cial wage in­equal­ity is com­monly meas­ured by the ra­tio of Afric­an-Amer­ic­an (or Latino) wages to white wages. In 1979, the me­di­an black work­er earned 83 cents for every dol­lar paid to the me­di­an white work­er. The situ­ation has not im­proved, but worsened since then. In 2013, the me­di­an black work­er took home just 77 cents on the dol­lar. For the me­di­an His­pan­ic work­er, that gap has gone from 81 cents on the dol­lar to a shock­ing 69 cents on the dol­lar.

These gaps mean than on av­er­age, the work done by black or Latino work­ers is val­ued at less than the work done by white work­ers. Dif­fer­ences in pay are par­tially ex­plained by dis­par­it­ies in edu­ca­tion, ex­per­i­ence, or the kinds of jobs held by work­ers of col­or re­l­at­ive to whites. Yet, even when these char­ac­ter­ist­ics are the same, dif­fer­ences in pay still ex­ist. This re­main­ing gap is very likely the res­ult of on­go­ing dis­crim­in­a­tion — pay­ing work­ers of col­or less for the same work.

One of the reas­ons that the ra­cial wage gap has con­tin­ued to ex­pand is the fact that very few people of col­or re­ceive salar­ies that rank them among the top 5 per­cent of earners, where most wage growth has been con­cen­trated. The oth­er part of ra­cial wage in­equal­ity is re­lated to the fact that even with­in oth­er wage groups all along the scale, there’s of­ten a dif­fer­ence between what people of col­or make re­l­at­ive to whites.

After a brief peri­od in the late 1990s in which black work­er’s wages began to ac­cel­er­ate at a clip faster than those of white work­ers due to his­tor­ic­ally low un­em­ploy­ment, the old pat­tern re­turned.The growth of ra­cial wage in­equal­ity has con­tin­ued des­pite the fact that Afric­an-Amer­ic­an and Latino work­ers have col­lect­ively achieved more edu­ca­tion, an act that typ­ic­ally boosts wages. For work­ers of col­or, more edu­ca­tion gen­er­ally brings high­er wages than those earned by those with less edu­ca­tion, but it has not ne­ces­sar­ily res­ul­ted in wages equal to those paid to white peers.

Ad­dress­ing the prob­lems of stag­nant wages and ra­cial wage in­equal­ity in­volves a num­ber of tac­tics. On one hand, we must make cre­at­ing good, fam­ily-sup­port­ing jobs and faster wage growth for the vast ma­jor­ity of work­ers the cent­ral fo­cus of poli­cy­mak­ing. This in­cludes things like rais­ing the min­im­um wage, up­dat­ing over­time rules so that as many as 10 mil­lion more work­ers would be eli­gible, cre­at­ing new work-schedul­ing stand­ards, and more rig­or­ous en­force­ment of wage laws that can pre­vent vari­ous forms of wage theft. We also need to make real the abil­ity of people to bar­gain with their em­ploy­ers, a right that in prac­tice has been taken away. This has been done through laws passed by state le­gis­latures that re­strict pub­lic em­ploy­ees’ col­lect­ive-bar­gain­ing rights or the abil­ity to col­lect “fair share” dues through payroll de­duc­tions. All of these prac­tices, though not overtly race-based, would dis­pro­por­tion­ately raise wages for people of col­or who are more likely to work the kinds of jobs im­pacted by these is­sues.

We must also ad­dress ra­cial wage in­equal­ity in a more dir­ect way — for in­stance, by deal­ing with oc­cu­pa­tion­al se­greg­a­tion that lim­its minor­ity work­ers’ ac­cess to high­er pay­ing jobs, per­sist­ent un­em­ploy­ment dis­par­it­ies that stifle ca­reer de­vel­op­ment and wage growth, and out­right dis­crim­in­a­tion in the hir­ing, pro­mo­tion, and pay of minor­ity work­ers. Ad­di­tion­ally, we have to tackle so­cial is­sues like mass in­car­cer­a­tion that lim­it em­ploy­ment op­por­tun­it­ies and pay for count­less ex-of­fend­ers, par­tic­u­larly Afric­an-Amer­ic­an men. Without these re­forms, men who have been con­victed of minor of­fenses will con­tin­ue to be pun­ished for the rest of their lives.

An­oth­er broad so­cial change that would boost wages is im­mig­ra­tion re­form. Mean­ing­ful im­mig­ra­tion-policy changes would help to bring un­doc­u­mented work­ers out of the shad­ows and provide full rights to guest work­ers. Such re­forms would elim­in­ate some of the in­cent­ive to hire un­doc­u­mented work­ers and pay them less than oth­ers.

For far too long, wage stag­na­tion and in­equal­ity have been part of too many Amer­ic­ans’ work ex­per­i­ences. It’s time to ad­dress these prob­lems if we, as a na­tion, are ser­i­ous about elim­in­at­ing oth­er eco­nom­ic dis­par­it­ies.

Valer­ie Wilson is an eco­nom­ist and dir­ect­or of the Pro­gram on Race, Eth­ni­city, and the Eco­nomy at the Eco­nom­ic Policy In­sti­tute.

HAVE AN OPIN­ION ON POLICY AND CHAN­GING DEMO­GRAPH­ICS? The Next Amer­ica wel­comes op-ed pieces that ex­plore the polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pacts of the pro­found ra­cial and cul­tur­al changes fa­cing our na­tion, par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant to edu­ca­tion, eco­nomy, the work­force and health. Email Jan­ell Ross at jross@na­tion­al­journ­al.com. Please fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

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Source:

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Source:

COULD SOW DIVISION AMONG REPUBLICANS

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Source:

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION, DRUG FORFEITURE FUND

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Source:

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